Gareth Shapiro | London Based Flex / Air / Actionscript Freelance Developer & Trainer

Nokia is the worlds largest manufacturer of mobile phones, selling about a third of the world's handsets in 2010.

Like other mobile phone companies they appreciate the benefit of a store for customers to visit and this is especially true of the markets in Russia and Asia. Upon arriving at a Nokia store customers experience funky and cool interior design and of course access to all of the latest Nokia devices. To help enhance the experience through digital technology Nokia turned to the London branch of R/GA, Digital Agency of the Decade.

A recent trend within the UK government is one of providing access to the data sets they hold to the public. It appears to me at least that the thinking behind this is that transparency is promoted, the public may well come up with ways of using the data that are useful to everyone, and after all the public has paid for the creation of these data sets and so it seems correct that they should have access to it.

Not too long ago I attended a meeting at London's amazing city hall which focused on the Greater London Authority's contribution to this movement, The London Datastore. For someone like myself who develops compelling rich interactive digital media for a living it was obvious that here is a rich source of potential to tell a story using this data and Flash / Flex.